


today more than yesterday

by Vintar



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:49:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7308271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vintar/pseuds/Vintar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You were my brother," Dima says. He looks at Nick's face like someone looking at an old photo, like the clients who come into Nick's office and describe the people they're missing, staring at the descriptions he writes down as if they can reach into a list of dry details and pull the person out of them wholesale.</p><p>Another dead life haunting his frame, and this one he doesn't even remember. He's a matryoshka doll of people. It's getting a little ridiculous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	today more than yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Something quick for a prompt about Nick separating his sense of identity from the original Nick.

"You were my brother," Dima says. He looks at Nick's face like someone looking at an old photo, like the clients who come into Nick's office and describe the people they're missing, staring at the descriptions he writes down as if they can reach into a list of dry details and pull the person out of them wholesale.

Another dead life haunting his frame, and this one he doesn't even remember. He's a matryoshka doll of people. It's getting a little ridiculous. 

The closest he gets to understanding is from Glory, of all people. Down in the crypts, their bosses locked away and picking over some plan, she kicks back against the crumbling wall and lets him light her cigarette. 

On his end, the action is familiar, automatic. Jenny would lean back, raise her cigarette, cock an eyebrow. Nick would flick out his lighter and lean in. _A_ Nick would, at least. The metal fingers lighting Glory's cigarette have never brushed against Jenny's own. She was dead when the bombs dropped, broken on the pavement with a bullet in her back. Someone else identified her body, touched her cold, pale hand, put flowers on her grave. 

"You're not the only one," Glory says. "I did the whole infiltration thing. They caught some mercenary, and put her from there--" she gestures to an imaginary figure, "--to here." The gesture wavers through the air, homing to her skull. 

"Any idea why?" It comes out of him automatically, like some long-dead synth infiltration is a case on his desk. If he's a person-- really a person, not just a collection of ghosts rattling around inside a metal frame-- then he's one that needs to learn to back off sometimes.

"Why do those assholes do anything?" Glory shrugs. "All this woman wanted in life was to do a day's work and come back to her girl. And that's the thing. She was my girl, too."

Glory takes a drag, and those sharp eyes are fixed on Nick like she's delivering critical mission information. "I fucking loved her, man. We'd grown up together! She was always so fucking nice to me. We'd been together for years. I loved her."

"Did you?"

"I did." Glory leans forward, never breaking eye contact. "I came off a factory line, even though I don't remember it, and I loved my girl through someone else's life. Whole lotta _I_ s in there, but not a whole lotta _me_. You following?"

"Yeah, I'm following."

He doesn't ask. He doesn't need to. Glory finishes her cigarette, crushes it out with the heel of her boot. "When they hit the killswitch, and dropped all those memories into background flavor, I shot her." She touches two fingers to the breastplate of her combat armor, nicotine-stained nails tip-tapping on the metal. " _I_ did, for the first time. A hell of a birth."

The silence is thick, tense. Nick knows enough about Glory to dial it back. "This whole affair is easier for people," he grouses.

Glory laughs. "Yeah, I know. I was one once, for a while. You were too. You'll get over it."

So, that's one way of looking at it-- synth personhood as a result of a series of do-overs, memories planted and erased and planted and erased until you are what you have left. Nick's familiar with the grandfather's axe paradox. It's not a particularly flattering way of thinking about oneself, especially given his need to literally replace parts of himself. 

When he explains that to Nate, he laughs. "Some of you may be old Nick, and some of you may be current Nick, but at least you know your wrist joints are straight from Diamond City Surplus."

"Heh. 98% philosophical quandary, 2% discount copper. I suppose it's one way of working through it."

Nate leans back against his rickety chair, arms crossed. They're up at Hangman's, waiting for the morning to break so they can head northward. The light of the binfire catches Nate's tired smile in the peripheries of Nick's vision, his shoulder a reassuring weight against Nick's own. "There you go. Just keep going until you're 100% Nick."

"Maybe, but there's an awful lot of me. That's a pricey kind of therapy."

"I've got an in at Daisy's Discounts." Nate winks. "I can get some caps skimmed off of the top."

It's not all that funny, but Nick's glad for the chance to laugh. He can, at least, divide this up for himself and himself only. The Nick that died when the bombs fell had never sat atop a creaking fire escape, listening to the sounds of mutants roaming the city in the dark, catching the sharp fumes of a plasma rifle being fixed somewhere below. The old Nick had never watched a friend laugh and felt the tug of something _good_ , something bright and new, something to see more of...

Except, that wasn't not quite right. There had been a night with Jenny, then just the new officer on the force, out on the docks, fireworks over the sea... He'd forgotten. 

He could pick over the memory, he knows. He's done it enough in the past, reeling memories out front to end like a film reel, watching himself as a stranger. Picking over the past, trying to find his own feet two hundred years ago in a different world.

The urge is strong. The urge is _always_ strong. He knows this from every grieving parent, from every love-lost fiance left in the lurch, from everyone who offers up memories over his desk, hoping he can bring them back to how they were _before_.

He doesn't want to be back then. He wants to be here, now, with Nate next to him, and the rotten, ragged, rebuilt world that's around them.

Nate pauses, beer half-way raised. "Problem?"

"Just thinking." Nick raises his own bottle. "To old loves."

"May they be left in happier times," Nate says. The pale strip of skin around his finger has nearly filled in, indistinguishable to all but those who know where it used to be. "And to new ones," Nate says, with something warm in his smile.

Well. "I could drink to that," Nick says, and it comes from no-one but himself.


End file.
